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Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Income Update - December 2012

December's income was lower than what I'd averaged through the first 11 months of 2012 but was still great at almost $6,500. It wasn't a great month for expenses but considering how much I went over budget on a few areas I'm happy that the expenses were still in line with the last few months. Gas was a bigger expense than normal this month, but I'm fine with that because I got the chance to go home a few times while we were down at work so I got to see my wife a few extra days and got to see my family on Christmas and the day after. Both were very much needed and appreciated. My minimum expenses for the month came in at $1,426.97 which brought my average minimum expenses down to $1,501.62 for the year. Not bad considering through the first 5 months I averaged over $1,610 per month. Total expenses for December totaled $1,584.34 which was up from November but still below my average through November of $1,676.74. After December I ended up averaging $1,669.04 total expenses each month. Dividend and interest income set a record providing $318.00 in passive income for the month. This covered 22.28% of my minimum expenses in December. I know I'm not at the point where I'll be close to averaging that amount of coverage on a monthly basis but it's great to see that over 1/5th of my minimum expenses were covered for the month. With the 30 year Treasury yield creeping back up to 2.95% and my net worth less my traditional retirement accounts, my FI number increased for the 7th straight month for an average monthly income of $224.63. This would have covered 15.74% of my minimum expenses in December.

*Minimum Expenses are only the expenses related to rent, utilities, car, food, minimum payment on debt and other necessities. In other words, the required amount of replacement income I would need for financial independence.
*Total Expenses are the total monthly outflow of money.
*Potential Retirement Income is income received from dividends, interest, cash back from credit card purchases and any other source of income not related to my job.
*FI is my liquid assets invested at the 30 year treasury bond yield at the end of each month divided by 12 to get monthly income.

4 comments:

I can only dream of having a FI savings rate of almost 70%. That is amazing. My savings mainly consist of bonuses I receive throughout the year as well as my income tax return which usually amounts to 5k.

What matters most is that you can stick with it and stay consistent in your saving. I'm definitely blessed to have a job that pays as well as it does, of course the reason it pays so well is because I have to be away from home for around 70% of the year which is very tough. That's why I'm taking advantage of the high pay to reach FI as early as possible so I can spend more time at home with my family and having the freedom to do as I please. Keep with it and you'll get there.

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